An art without tutelage: Independent Salon in Mexico, 1968-1971 is the first reconstruction of the exhibitions that the Independent Salon organized from 1968 to 1970, one of the main moments of break between advanced artists and the Mexican cultural apparatus. In fact, when studying the genesis of the Independent Hall, this is also the first review of the climate of artistic production of the year where the Games of the XIX Olympiad, the student movement and state violence coincide in Mexico.

Precisely because it emerged in a moment of crisis, the Independent Salon brought together a set of heterogeneous aesthetic and political positions. Although the first cause of the Hall was the defense of the strictest individual creative freedom, progressively the group articulated collaborative positions, the game with unusual materials, and the production of settings and ephemeral works, especially in the Third Hall of 1970 where the lack Resource Center invited artists to work with cardboard and newsprint. The Independent Room was also the scene of the generational clash between the individual practice of the workshop and the ambition to produce a collective and politicized art of the 1970s.

Turning our eyes to reconstructing the activities of the Independent Salon in detail not only completes a pending chapter in the history of art, but also allows us to think about the power and various incarnations that the notion of autonomy can take.